Re: Opinions

["R. William Field" <bill-field@uiowa.edu>]

Al, 

I am not interested in winning.  I am interested in a scientific dialogue
that is based on mutual respect and improving our understanding of each
others position.  If you would like to continue a scientific dialogue,
please reply OFF the listserv as requested by Melissa some time ago.  I
look forward to hearing your reply via direct email.  mailto:
bill-field@uiowa.edu.

Regards, Bill Field  

At 07:45 PM 3/25/98 -0600, you wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
>Response from Field several weeks ago.
 
>> Al,
>> 
>> I am surprised you think we are 180 degrees opposed.  I thought we had
>> found a few items in the past we agreed upon.
>> 
>> In answer to your question below.  I think the 2 people need to find an
>> area of common agreement and work from there.  An agreement of 100% may be
>> unreachable.  A possible initial goal may be a 50% agreement with wide
>> confidence intervals.
>> 
>> Let's first agree to take our discussions off (spelling corrected) the
listserv.
>
>I assume you mean "take our discussions OFF the listserv?"  That's
>fine.  When we get to some agreement, we might want to tell others our
>pearls of wisdom.
>
>I didn't mean to say that our points of view on the LNTH are 180 degrees
>apart.  I was only introducing the question that followed.  I don't know
>yet how far apart our views are.
>
>Your response to the question is similar to many I have had in the past
>from those to whom I posed the question.  Remember, I didn't say the two
>people had to agree 100 percent.  I only said they each had to feel they
>had won 100 percent.   Compromise is really not OK in this setting
>because, usually, compromise means each party gives up something and
>doesn't really want to.  So compromisers don't win 100%.  The solution
>to the problem requires a shift in paradigm just as letting go of the
>LNTH does.  The win-win situation is talked about a great deal in
>management classes, but is not realized much in the real world.  I'm
>looking for the technology that will permit 100% winners every time. 
>But on to the LNTH.
>
>Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start (with
>apologies to Sound of Music).
>It seems that there are at least two schools of thought about low dose
>effects and how to approach appropriate dose control and limitation.
>
>Can we first agree that we don't know how cancer is produced?  And we
>don't know how radiation produces cancer?  And we don't know if low
>doses have a harmful effect, no effect, or have a beneficial effect? 
>Also, can we agree that there are harmful effects of short term exposure
>to high doses, but we don't know the effects of long term exposure to
>cumulative high doses.  Further, can we agree that the atom bomb
>survivor data is short term, high dose data and that cancer induction
>can be related to dose for that data?
>
>If we can agree about those things, then can we agree, in the face of
>much unknowing, that there are at least two ways we can go vis-a-vis
>guessing at what the low dose effects might be: first, we can use the
>LNTH with zero intercept, or, second, we can assume a threshold at some
>yet-to-be determined dose and say, since we have no knowledge of low
>dose effects, and we are unwilling to extrapolate from high dose
>effects, we will set the threshold at some safe distance below where the
>high dose data end (a factor of 10, for example) and wait until those
>exposed to such low doses exhibit an effect, if any.
>
>Lets talk about the above and see where we get.
>
>Regards Al
>